Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Solipsue

Look, the thing is, you should just be glad that I'm not posting anything. It's like I've got this song stuck in my head, and all the lyrics are ME ME ME ME ME. Or I'm pregnant and watching soaps but can't concentrate because there's this powerful craving for pickles and ME ME ME ME ME. I've gone so far into my own thoughts about my own self that I'm gonna need Virgil to guide me out, and after a while even he's going to go, "Look, you're on your own; I can't take it anymore." I am, in short, in no position to be anywhere near a keyboard and self-publishing software.

Or maybe I'm just crabby because I spent the entire morning emitting noxious fumes into the ozone layer with a few hundred fellow citizens. Get a load of this: the District of Columbia, rather than authorizing mechanics and garages throughout the city to perform vehicle inspections, requires all registered vehicles to come to one and only one location for the inspection gauntlet. As you can imagine, the queue is mighty and daunting, and well and truly Soviet in its epic girth. As you might not imagine, the wait is conducted in your car. Instead of devising some alternative system, the District of Columbia sends you to the end of the line, in your car, several blocks away, and asks you to putt-putt-putt for one and a half hours as you inch toward the station and try to stop nodding off to Diane Rehm. Your engine grumbles, your gas light gleams, you will surely have dreams tonight featuring the bumper sticker you have been staring at for 90 minutes. There's really no way for this to not ruin your day, so here we are. Self-absorbed and grouchy. It's enough to make you turn Virginian.